Anyone can build a website. On a platform like WordPress, it’s a matter of hours to get a blogging site up and running. However, the more important question is, how many of us can build websites that generate the most traffic? Frankly speaking, up until a couple of months ago I wasn’t about generating business. I was focusing on the wrong things, while the right ones were getting overlooked.
So,
- What are the two places that bring the most traffic to your sites?
- Have you ever looked into them with a microscope to capitalize on them to your best abilities?
- Are you sure you are thinking about the same two places that I am talking about?
Have you thought of your answer? If it’s right, then there is a high probability that your site may be on the right track.
And these places are;
- Search engines;
- And social media
Both have an audience in billions and both can make your site flourish a great deal through their audience pool.
Now, we won’t have enough time to discuss both of them, so I would be talking about the slightly bigger fish, that would be search engines.
Google alone experiences close to 4 billions searches a day. That means 4 billion times people pick up their devices, go to Google and write on its search bar whatever it is they may want to know. You should know all of these searches or even majority of them aren’t informational. People actually go to Google to know about businesses, products and services and eventually find them. There is a high likelihood that you might have landed on this blog because of a Google search.
So, is it not wise to leverage search engines and make your audience reach you faster than otherwise possible? I think it is, and I am certain you agree with me as well.
That is why I am writing this blog. My aim is to help people like me, with a non-technical background, to capitalize on search engine optimization. I was an amateur when I started my website, a blog like this with the subtle nuances of SEO practices in web designing would have helped me make my site bloom much faster than it eventually did.
I would say that I had the help of a wonderful digital marketing company in India that consulted and guided me throughout my transition to an SEO-friendly web design.
So, here are the three things that made a huge difference in my business.
Content
The first thing to focus on while targeting search engine optimization within your web design is your content.
My website was one intended for helping people make better lifestyle choices. I did this through blogs and of course paid services, which were dependent on the visibility of my content and well, blogs.
I wrote really well and so did the other two writers I had. My pieces were raw and inspiring. However, they weren’t bringing on business. If nobody got to see the impressiveness of my written word, how was I supposed to convince them to buy my wellness services, right?
The digital marketing company that I had consulted came to my rescue. It told me that even though my content was good, it was not good enough for Google. What that meant was three things;
- One, I was targeting keywords and placing them strategically within my content. It was these keywords that search engines would want to see in my content to consider it relevant to the user’s search.
- Second, my writing was complicated, a little too much. I was using difficult vocabulary and complex sentence structures that for the ordinary weren’t easy to understand. Not everyone is an English major, right?
- Third, I wasn’t using enough infographics to relay the information that I wanted to. This made the blogs seem dull and the users ended up losing interest and Google too.
These changes were pretty simple to execute. I mean it wasn’t hard to research the appropriate keywords. And it wasn’t hard to write sentences that were easy to read and had less than 20 words.
I revamped the entire content of my webpages and started writing blogs in this new and simplified way.
Maps
For every website there is, Google considers its relevance before putting it on top of its results page. To do this, search engines like Google use crawlers that scan through your site. And sitemaps help a great deal in that.
The problem with my site was that I had a lot of things going on. And there was no way for the visitor or the search engine to know what was going on.
My consultant told me to that search engines also look at individual webpages on each website. And from an SEO standpoint, I had to have an XML sitemap to ensure nothing goes amiss.
This one was a big more technical to implement than the changing the content, but it needed to be done if I were to stand a chance to optimise SEO. So, I asked my developer to write a script and implement the same on my site. The Yoast plugin in WordPress also came in handy in this process.
What happened next?
- All my URLs were listed properly and the unseen and ignored pages were now prominent as well;
- Search engines could now priotise the pages they would crawl on my site;
- I also got valuable feedback from the detach engines, especially Google;
- Now, every aspect of my site flowed naturally and its navigation improved tremendously.
Performance
The last thing I was told to focus on, rather vehemently, was my site’s performance. Google alone provides millions of results for every search within seconds. So, if my site didn’t load properly, the user would move on to the next. And me being on top of the results page would be futile.
The window of opportunity is quite limited. After 3 seconds, the user would hit the escape button and jump onto a faster alternative. And we never want that.
So, optimizing performance is key in optimizing SEO, otherwise, everything you do would go in vain.
Here is what I did to improve my site’s performance.
- I focused on lessening the number and size of files in my repository to lessen to time it took to fulfil a request.
- I also ensured that less number of HTTP requests were taken to reach a page.
- I tried to ensure that the page outline and text loads in less than a second, even if the images and videos take more time. This would keep the visitor engaged for longer than 3 seconds.
- I religiously cached on cookies, so that upon reloading the time taken was far less.
Just these four helped bring a tangible change in my site’s performance. To enhance it further, I am in talks with a better hosting service. Along with that, I am also looking into a CDN and a cloud-based website monitoring platform.
Conclusion
Our websites are our livelihoods, they are responsible for putting food on our tables. And I am sure that all of us try very hard to make the most of them. However, we still never reach our targets.
Before consulting a digital marketing company in India, I thought I was doing everything by the book. However, I never witnessed the results that I wanted. It was only after talking to the team that I realized how a few simple changes focusing on SEO can promote my business.
Ever since I have implemented these three strategies, my business has flourished by 45% within the last four months. I am actually close to reaching my targets. If I had realized what I was doing wrong, maybe I’d have surpassed my goal a long time ago. That is why, I have written this blog, to help people like me reach fulfill their aim earlier.
